IOC member Pound says Madrid Olympic bid not helped over doping

By Sebastian Fest Feb 11, 2012, 15:05 GMT

Madrid - International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Richard Pound believes the 'impression' Spain is protecting its athletes in the fight against doping may not help Madrid's bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

Pound, a former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA, said Spain should be considering this factor in what could be a close race for the summer Games.

'I don't know how many of the IOC members have doping way up on their list of considerations,' he told dpa in a telephone interview.

'But if you have a country where it's clear that they are not doing very much against doping, and protecting their own athletes and things like that, you can say, yeah, maybe we should go somewhere where that doesn't happen.'

Madrid is running against Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Rome and Tokyo for the 2020 Games. The host city will be selected in September next year during the IOC General Assembly in Buenos Aires.

The Spanish capital will present its applicant files on Monday, two days before the February 15 deadline, at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

On Monday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) banned Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador for two years for doping.

Pound said he agreed with Ricci Bitti, president of the International Tennis Federation and also an IOC member, who said failure to 'disclose all aspects' of the anti-doping investigation Operation Puerto was harming Spain's image.

'I agree entirely, I think that it is outrageous what is happening in Spain,' Pound said,

He added that he had hoped that 'finally we are going to get a big breakthrough' with Operation Puerto. 'But then the Spanish just closed the dam. It's very bad for the reputation of Spain,' he said.

Asked whether the impression was that Spain was not doing enough on doping and was protecting its athletes, Pound said: 'That's the impression. The fact that in Operation Puerto only cyclists were found, and strangely enough, only foreign cyclists is not very persuasive. I think they need to reconsider a stronger position.'

Pound meanwhile said he was against any change to the principle of 'strict liability', in which a person is responsible for damage caused by his own acts regardless of culpability.

Spanish Olympic Committee president Alejandro Blanco, who this week defended Spanish sport in the wake of the Contador ban, had suggested a change to the principle.

'It's really important not to be changed,' Pound said, 'Every athlete is responsible for what is found in his body. If the substance is in your body that's a doping infraction.

'The only question thereafter is what is the sanction. If you can prove that there is no fault or whatsoever, no significant fault, you can have a reduction, but only up to 50 per cent.'

Contador, the 2007, 2009 and 2010 Tour de France winner, now stripped of his Tour title, tested positive for the banned anabolic agent clenbuterol during the 2010 Tour but claimed the drug got into his system from contaminated meat.

However, Pound said he saw no alternative to the 'strict liability' principle because it would be impossible to prove intention.

'Even when the athlete may not know the substance is in the body, they had an advantage, this means the other competitors had to compete against a doped athlete,' he said.

Changing the principle would be 'a way to try to remove almost any possibility of a sanction for doping offence,' he added.

Read more about Madrid

Read more about Olympics 20120

Read more about Olympics 2020